Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Huet's brilliantly dark yellow colored 2008 Vouvray Clos du Bourg Moelleux Première Trie offers a super clear and ripe, concentrated and highly elegant, gorgeously aromatic bouquet of ripe, yellow-skinned fruits and a dusty stone and smoky bacon aromas. Sweet and full of finesse and salty minerals on the highly elegant and fruit-intense palate, this beautifully balanced Chenin develops a great tension, density and compact structure that also dominates the long and very promising finish. There is so much finesse and concentration in this wine that you can only fall in love with it. Luckily this affair will hold much longer than today's average marriage.
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Wine Spectator
Starts with a tangy crème fraiche note before giving way to green almond, green tea, chamomile, powdered ginger and mineral notes. So precise it almost comes off as dry in feel, but the finish belies its late harvest with a showy candied citrus peel note. Drink now through 2025.
Unquestionably one of the most diverse grape varieties, Chenin Blanc can do it all. It shines in every style from bone dry to unctuously sweet, oaked or unoaked, still or sparkling and even as the base for fortified wines and spirits. Perhaps Chenin Blanc’s greatest asset is its ever-present acidity, maintained even under warm growing conditions. Somm Secret—Landing in South Africa in the mid 1800s, today the country has double the acreage of Chenin Blanc planted compared to France. There is also a new wave of dedicated producers committed to restoring old Chenin vines.
An important white wine appellation in the Touraine and one of the top in all of the Loire, Vouvray uniquely specializes in a wide range of styles from dry to sweet, and still to sparkling, each with its own definitive character. Vouvray is almost always 100% Chenin blanc (however up to 5% Menu Pineau is theoretically allowed but not often used).
Vouvray is also the name of a pretty little town just east of Tours on the northern bank of the Loire—its vineyards surround it to the northeast. Houses and cellars are carved out of the local tuffeau, a chalky or sandy, fine-grained limestone. Vineyards inhabit clay and gravel topsoil over tuffeau on the plateau, the best of which have a slight slope with a southerly aspect.
Chenin blanc’s high acidity and natural adaptability allow it to produce a wide range of styles with enormous success. Styles under the Vouvray name include sparkling, both Brut and Demi-Sec and still: Sec (dry) and Tendre (off-dry) as well as Demi-Sec (noticeably sweet), Moelleux (very sweet) and Liquoreaux (botrytized). Most can age about five years but the best quality versions will continue to improve over decades.